How scary is the Muslim Brotherhood?

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by L.mo5rg

They separated MB from other prisoners cause they made all the prisoners they were with religious, and they became good people etc.

Why wouldn't a prison-warden want that to happen?!

[L.mo5rg]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

Why wouldn't a prison-warden want that to happen?!

It's not really about what the prison warden wants, and I doubted he wanted anything other than his paycheck (well maybe more money than that). The state isn't (wasn't?) in the business of making people better humans. They are (were?) - ok I'll stop doing that now - against people becoming religious, and designed the school system so people would become dumber. In egyptian state schools you literally read the textbook out loud to memorise it (and its riddled with errors), and the exam i just about writing out what was in the texbook. If it's something that has the same meaning but is worded differently it's wrong. The state needs to have small-time criminals around so they have someone to hire when they need thugs etc.

(If you're having trouble with my coherency refer to my previous post )

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by L.mo5rg

It's not really about what the prison warden wants, and I doubted he wanted anything other than his paycheck (well maybe more money than that). The state isn't (wasn't?) in the business of making people better humans. They are (were?) - ok I'll stop doing that now - against people becoming religious, and designed the school system so people would become dumber. In egyptian state schools you literally read the textbook out loud to memorise it (and its riddled with errors), and the exam i just about writing out what was in the texbook. If it's something that has the same meaning but is worded differently it's wrong. The state needs to have small-time criminals around so they have someone to hire when they need thugs etc.

(If you're having trouble with my coherency refer to my previous post )

I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe it. Especially, "The state needs to have small-time criminals around so they have someone to hire when they need thugs etc." Sounds like the sort of thing an American paranoid-libertarian would write.

[L.mo5rg]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe it. Especially, "The state needs to have small-time criminals around so they have someone to hire when they need thugs etc." Sounds like the sort of thing an American paranoid-libertarian would write.

Well they do regularly hire criminals as thugs. I know about a lot of the corruption going on there because (apart from it being common knowledge to most egyptians) traditionally our family has gone into special forces police, so I have a lot of family members who were involved in this (the hiring of thugs) as well as the hiring of riot police and their selection process informs they get the stupidest people so they will follow orders blindly. Regarding the schooling that's something I experienced myself (albeit briefly) and half the knowledge in the scientific textbooks was utter BS and what we did in class was actually read out of the textbook and memorise it.

[L.mo5rg]

But the fact is regardles of whether they wanted small time criminals or not, they are invested in getting people to be less religious. A lot of my friends were banned from leading prayers because their voices were really nice so they attracted a lot of people to the prayer. People whose friday sermons are meaningful and go beyond the basic yeah you have to be a good person and pray five times a day etc, are banned from giving sermons and occasionally from entering the country. Films actively portray anyone who is religious as bad, and a regular theme in the 90's was someone whose life was terrible when they were religious, then they got smart and everything became rosy. Or someone whose life was ruined by Islam in some way or another (in a film I watched today the civil court ruled that the girl could stay with her adopted father who had taken care of her all her life but then the sharia court ruled that she go back to her biological family who had thrown her out on the street)

[voltaire]

Well, it's kind of scary that (unless Israel is totally making shit up, which seems quite unlikely) the left hand of Morsi's government doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt denies Egypt’s president sent letter to Israeli leader

A letter to Israel from Egypt’s new president hoping for regional peace kicked up a stir Tuesday when the Egyptian leader’s Islamist movement denied he sent it. Israel insisted the letter was genuine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...9MX_story.html

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by L.mo5rg

The state isn't (wasn't?) in the business of making people better humans. They are (were?) - ok I'll stop doing that now - against people becoming religious, and designed the school system so people would become dumber.

I hope you realize those are two very different, if not incompatible, goals.

[Ludovic]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

I hope you realize those are two very different, if not incompatible, goals.

Nonsense, it's perfectly possible to be both irreligious and dumb.

[Sitnam]

It's easy to be all promises and declarations with a grass roots movement until you have an actual stake in power and have to compromise. I realize they have the potential to warp a liberal democratic constitution, but I doubt a truly Western one was really in the cards anyway. They've been the Junta's bogeymen for local pragmatic appeasement and international foreign aid for so long that's all they know. I don't think sharia style government is a possibility given Egypt's culture and political and financial ties with the West so let them try to govern.

The new car smell will dissipate but fast.

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Ludovic

Nonsense, it's perfectly possible to be both irreligious and dumb.

But not to be religious and smart. Ever read the work of somebody who is religious and clearly should be smart, like C.S. Lewis or St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas? Religion can spoil the finest mind.

[Ibn Warraq]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

But not to be religious and smart. Ever read the work of somebody who is religious and clearly should be smart, like C.S. Lewis or St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas? Religion can spoil the finest mind.

Ibn Khaldun was certainly brilliant and love him or hate, the Ayatollah Khomeini was always known to be ferociously smart which even his bitterest opponents admitted.

For that matter, nobody ever considered Maimonides a dummy.

[colonial]

Originally Posted by BrianGlutton

But not to be religious and smart. Ever read the work of somebody who is religious and clearly should be smart, like C.S. Lewis or St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas? Religion can spoil the finest mind.

Are you saying it is not possible to be religious and smart, or is that some kind of
misstatement or typo?

Prior to the 20th century almost every great Western scientific mind was religious,
and that is some impressive list: Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal,
Newton, Leibniz, Gauss, Faraday, Maxwell and Mendel, just to name the most prominent
who come quickly to mind.